A process similar to sampling originated in the 1940s with musique concrète, experimental music created by splicing, manipulating and looping tape. The term sampling was coined in the late 1970s by the creators of the Fairlight CMI, an influential early sampler that became a staple of 1980s pop music. The 1988 release of the first Akai MPC, an affordable sampler with an intuitive interface, made sampling accessible to a wider audience.

Sampling is a foundation of hip hop music, with producers sampling funk and soul records, particularly drum breaks, which could then be rapped over. Musicians have created albums assembled entirely from samples, such as DJ Shadow's 1996 album Endtroducing. The practice has influenced all genres of music and is particularly important to electronic music, hip hop and pop.

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In the 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer developed musique concrète, an experimental form of music created by recording sounds to tape, splicing them, and manipulating them to create sound collages. He created pieces using recordings of sounds including the human body, locomotives, and kitchen utensils.[1] The method also involved the creation of tape loops, splicing lengths of tape end to end, by which a sound could be played indefinitely.[1] Schaeffer developed a tape recorder, the Phonogene, which played loops at twelve different pitches triggered by a keyboard.[1]

The term sampling was coined by in the late 1970s by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel to describe a feature of their Fairlight CMI synthesizer.[1] Designers of early samplers used the term to describe the technical process of the instruments, rather than to describe how users would use the feature.[4] While developing the Fairlight, Vogel sampled around a second of a piano piece from a radio broadcast, and discovered that he could imitate a real piano by playing the sample back at different pitches. He recalled in 2005:

It sounded remarkably like a piano, a real piano. This had never been done before ... By today's standards it was a pretty awful piano sound, but at the time it was a million times more like a piano than anything any synthesiser had churned out. So I rapidly realised that we didn't have to bother with all the synthesis stuff. Just take the sounds, whack them in the memory and away you go.[5]

Compared to later samplers, the Fairlight offered limited control over samples. It allowed control over pitch and envelope, and could only record a few seconds of sound. However, its ability to sample and play back acoustic sounds became its most popular feature.[1] Though the concept of reusing recordings in larger recordings was not new, the Fairlight's built-in sequencer and design made the process simple.[1] According to the Guardian, the Fairlight was the "first truly world-changing sampler".[6] Though it was it was unaffordable for most hobbyists, early users included Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, Herbie Hancock, Todd Rundgren, Icehouse and Ebn Ozn.[7]

The success of the Fairlight inspired competitors, improving the technology and driving down prices.[1] Early competitors included the E-mu Emulator[1] and the Akai S950.[7]Drum machines such as the Oberheim DMX and Linn LM-1 began incorporating samples of drum kits rather than generating sounds from circuits.[8] In response to demand, samplers such as the E-mu SP-1200, released in 1987, stored longer samples.[4] With a ten-second sample length and a distinctive "gritty" sound, the SP-1200 was used extensively by East Coast producers during the "golden age of hip hop" of the late 1980s and early 90s.[9] In 1988, Akai released the first MPC sampler,[10] which allowed users to assign samples to separate pads and trigger them independently, similarly to playing a keyboard or drum kit.[11] It had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music,[12][11] allowing artists to create elaborate tracks without other instruments, a studio, or formal music knowledge.[13] Today, most samples are recorded and edited using digital audio workstations such as Pro Tools and Ableton Live.[14][4]

Sampling has influenced all genres of music[6] and is an important part of genres including pop, hip hop, and electronic music.[15] It is a fundamental element of remix culture.[16] Commonly sampled elements include strings, basslines, drum loops, vocal hooks, or entire bars of music, especially from soul records.[17] Samples may be layered,[18]equalized,[18] sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped, or otherwise manipulated.[15] As sampling technology has progressed, the possibilities for manipulation have grown.[15]

The designers of early samplers anticipated that users would sample short sounds, such as drum hits or individual notes, to use as "building blocks" for compositions. However, users began sampling longer passages of music.[4] In the words of Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever, "They didn't just want the sound of John Bonham's kick drum, they wanted to loop and repeat the whole of 'When the Levee Breaks'."[4]Roger Linn, designer of the LM-1 and MPC, said: "It was a very pleasant surprise. After sixty years of recording, there are so many prerecorded examples to sample from. Why reinvent the wheel?"[4]

In 2008, Guardian journalist David McNamee wrote that in the 1980s sampling had been a political act, but had lost its edge with ubiquity: "Two record decks and your dad's old funk collection was once the working-class black answer to punk ... Sampling, which once seemed world-ending in the eyes of the music industry, is now non-threatening and a bit passé, particularly with today's availability and ease of original music-making software."[14]

To legally use a sample, an artist must acquire legal permission from the copyright holder, a process known as clearance; this can be a lengthy and complex process.[17] Sampling without permission breaches the copyright of the original sound recording, of the composition and lyrics, and of the performances, such as a rhythm or guitar riff. The moral rights of the original artist may also be breached if they are not credited or object to the sampling.[17] In some cases, sampling may be protected under American fair use laws.[17]

Following the ruling, samples on commercially released recordings have typically been taken either from obscure recordings (such as on Endtroducing) or cleared, an often expensive option only available to successful acts.[35] According to the Guardian, "Sampling became risky business and a rich man's game, with record labels regularly checking if their musical property had been tea-leafed."[14] For less successful artists, the legal implications for samples can create confusion. According to Fact, "For a bedroom producer, clearing a sample can be nearly impossible, both financially and in terms of administration."[15] The 1989 Beastie Boys record Paul's Boutique is composed almost entirely of samples, most of which were cleared "easily and affordably"; the clearance process would be much more expensive today.[36]

According to Fact, early hip hop sampling was governed by "unspoken" rules forbidding the sampling of recent records, reissues, other hip hop records, or from non-vinyl sources, among other restrictions.[27] These rules were relaxed as younger producers took over: "For many producers today it is no longer a case of 'should I sample this?' but of 'can I get away with sampling this?'. Thus the ethics of sampling unravelled as the practice became ever more ubiquitous."[27]

In 2011, the US producer Timbaland won a copyright infringement case after sampling parts of a composition owned by the Finnish record label Kernel Records without permission, claiming it to be sampling.[37] Under US copyright law, a work must first be registered with the US copyright office to become the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit. The court held that by being published online, the composition had been simultaneously published in every country with internet service, including the US. The work, therefore, satisfied the definition of a US work, and as it had not been registered with the US copyright office it could be sampled without permission.[38]

To circumvent legal problems, producers may recreate a recording rather than sample it. This requires only the publisher's permission, and gives the artist more freedom to alter constituent components (such as separate guitar and drum tracks).[39]

Katz, Mark. "Music in 1s and 0s: The Art and Politics of Digital Sampling." In Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 137-57. ISBN0-520-24380-3